Thursday, November 19, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
United Kingdom Ordnance Survey for the Masses: UK map data to be free at last : Consequences for the Internet
As written by Martin Bryant:
"The UK government has announced that it is to explore ways of making huge amounts of public data freely available for the first time....
Until now, the official Ordnance Survey maps of the entire UK have been only available to people willing to pay...."
See
UK map data free at last – what it means for the web
"The UK government has announced that it is to explore ways of making huge amounts of public data freely available for the first time....
Until now, the official Ordnance Survey maps of the entire UK have been only available to people willing to pay...."
See
UK map data free at last – what it means for the web
Friday, May 15, 2009
Cartography of the Heavens in the Neolithic Era : The Tanum Petroglyphs of Sweden and (formerly) Norway as a Stellar Planisphere
This posting is not about modern law but about ancient law. It was the ancient ordering of the stars of the heavens, which, according to Bertrand Russell, gave men their first conceptions of natural law.
We have been successful - so we allege - in deciphering the entire complex of Scandinavian rock drawings at the World Heritage Site of Tanum, now in Sweden, and formerly in Norway (until the year 1658 - see the Treaty of Roskilde).
Our decipherment shows that the more than 1500 petroglyphs (rock drawings) at Tanum and its rock art affiliate locations form an enormous ca. 70 square kilometer planisphere (sky map of the heavens).
This sky map forms a shape of the stars along the Milky Way which was probably intended by its makers to represent a heavenly boat of the ancient Nordic seafarers. We have drawn in the line of the Milky Way to show this, but it is not, as far as we know, actually drawn on the ground.
As we shall be presenting a paper on this topic in May of this year in Horn / Bad Meinberg, Germany, at the Machalett Conference on Preshistory and Early History, this posting just contains the basics of our discovery.
It was 30 years ago in the year 1977 that this author first visited the petroglyphs (rock drawings) of Tanum, located in Tanumshede, Västra Götaland (historically Bohuslän), about a two-hour drive north of Göteborg (Gothenburg). Tanum was not well known internationally in 1977, in spite of over 1500, in part gigantic, rock drawings.
Tanum includes the following petroglyphic locations covering many square kilometers of countryside: Vitlycke (where the museum is located), Tanum, Tegneby, Aspeberget, Gerum, Ryland, Oppen, Slänge, Varlös, Fossum, Lycke, Hoghem, Västerby, Ljungby, Tuvene, Litsleby, Kyrkoryk, Orrekläpp, Rungstung, Satetorp, Ryk, Tyft, Hovtorp, Björneröd, Bergslycke, Kalleby and Trättelanda.
One key to our decipherment was the Tanum rock drawing location map foundat the World Heritage Site for Tanum. Without such a complete overview of the area, such a decipherment as ours would be impossible, since it is the entire complex of petroglyphs which builds the secret to this enormous site. All of these petroglyphs as a whole represent the stars of the heavens, with multiple petroglyphs in clusters representing constellations of stars known to us today. Many of these along the ecliptic of course form our modern Zodiac.
One cannot escape the feeling at Tanum that we are witnessing the birth of modern astronomy among the ancient seafarers, whose need for a knowledge of star orientation in sea navigation is beyond dispute.
These ancient men formed these constellations primarily for practical purposes and not, as mainstream archaeology persists in advocating regarding these petroglyphs, for unproven rites and rituals, which may have been a part of the complex of the ancient world, but certainly not as its moving force.
It is in fact little wonder that there are so many boats (ancient ships) represented in the petroglyphic figures. To the seafaring ancients, the night sky was a sea of stars. We think it possible that this might be the location at which our modern stellar constellations were initially "grouped" by European man - for purposes of navigation in seafaring travel.
There are other proofs - beyond the evidence of the rock drawings themselves - that this astronomical decipherment is correct, e.g. the names of locations at which the rock drawings are found, but these proofs will first be discussed in a paper in German to be presented to the 41st Conference of the Machalett Study Group on Prehistory and Early History in May of this year.
Technorati Tags: Sverige, Sweden, Norge, Norway, archaeology, astronomy, archaeoastronomy, planisphere, sky map, Scandinavia, Tanum, Tanumshede, Vitlycke, Västra Götaland, Bohuslän, rock drawings, rock art, ancient history, history, petroglyphs, Milky Way, Roskilde, World Heritage, World Heritage sites, Bertrand Russell, Law Pundit
We have been successful - so we allege - in deciphering the entire complex of Scandinavian rock drawings at the World Heritage Site of Tanum, now in Sweden, and formerly in Norway (until the year 1658 - see the Treaty of Roskilde).
Our decipherment shows that the more than 1500 petroglyphs (rock drawings) at Tanum and its rock art affiliate locations form an enormous ca. 70 square kilometer planisphere (sky map of the heavens).
The graphic presentation of the decipherment is found below:
The Decipherment of the Tanum Petroglyphs by Andis Kaulins 2007
This sky map forms a shape of the stars along the Milky Way which was probably intended by its makers to represent a heavenly boat of the ancient Nordic seafarers. We have drawn in the line of the Milky Way to show this, but it is not, as far as we know, actually drawn on the ground.
As we shall be presenting a paper on this topic in May of this year in Horn / Bad Meinberg, Germany, at the Machalett Conference on Preshistory and Early History, this posting just contains the basics of our discovery.
It was 30 years ago in the year 1977 that this author first visited the petroglyphs (rock drawings) of Tanum,
Tanum includes the following petroglyphic locations covering many square kilometers of countryside: Vitlycke (where the museum is located), Tanum, Tegneby, Aspeberget, Gerum, Ryland, Oppen, Slänge, Varlös, Fossum, Lycke, Hoghem, Västerby, Ljungby, Tuvene, Litsleby, Kyrkoryk, Orrekläpp, Rungstung, Satetorp, Ryk, Tyft, Hovtorp, Björneröd, Bergslycke, Kalleby and Trättelanda.
One key to our decipherment was the Tanum rock drawing location map found
One cannot escape the feeling at Tanum that we are witnessing the birth of modern astronomy among the ancient seafarers, whose need for a knowledge of star orientation in sea navigation is beyond dispute.
These ancient men formed these constellations primarily for practical purposes and not, as mainstream archaeology persists in advocating regarding these petroglyphs, for unproven rites and rituals, which may have been a part of the complex of the ancient world, but certainly not as its moving force.
It is in fact little wonder that there are so many boats (ancient ships) represented in the petroglyphic figures. To the seafaring ancients, the night sky was a sea of stars. We think it possible that this might be the location at which our modern stellar constellations were initially "grouped" by European man - for purposes of navigation in seafaring travel.
There are other proofs - beyond the evidence of the rock drawings themselves - that this astronomical decipherment is correct, e.g. the names of locations at which the rock drawings are found, but these proofs will first be discussed in a paper in German to be presented to the 41st Conference of the Machalett Study Group on Prehistory and Early History in May of this year.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Mapping Civilizations : Cartographia
We are a bit late on this, but Cartographia: Mapping Civilisations by Vincent Virga and the Library of Congress is a "Must Have Book" for your library shelves. For example, it features the Waldseemüller Map, the first map to ever use the term "America":
You can view 16 of the maps in small images at NPR.
The original Library of Congress press release stated:
"Waldseemüller map is the first map to include the name "America" and the first to depict the Americas as separate from Asia. There is only one surviving copy of the map, which was purchased by the Library of Congress in 2001 for $10 million."We show this map below from Wikimedia Commons but see also LOC:
You can view 16 of the maps in small images at NPR.
The original Library of Congress press release stated:
"September 26, 2007Library's Map Treasures Are Highlighted in "Cartographia"
New Publication to Be Subject of Program and Book Signing on Oct. 23
Maps are a visual record of human endeavor, each with a tale to tell. In their various forms, maps are models of time, diaries of political maneuverings and works of art that provide a unique vision of how the world evolved.
Drawn from the world’s largest cartographic collection, housed in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, "Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations," by Vincent Virga, has been published by the Library in association with Little, Brown and Company.
Comprising more than 250 maps, "Cartographia" celebrates the work of those who have charted the world from the dawn of civilization to the present. Among the rare gems included in the book are the 1507 Waldseemüller world map, the first to include the designation "America"; Orelius’s "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum" of 1570, considered to be the first modern atlas; rare maps from Africa, Asia and Oceania that challenge traditional Western perspectives; William Faulkner’s hand-drawn 1936 map of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Miss.; and a map of the human genome.
Vincent Virga is the author of "Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States," which was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and the History Book Club.
Virga and co-author Ron Grim will discuss "Cartographia" as part of the Library’s Books & Beyond author series at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 23, in the Montpelier Room, located on the sixth floor of the Library’s James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. The program, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored jointly by the Center for the Book, the Geography and Map Division and the Publishing Office. For more information, contact the Center for the Book at (202) 707-5221.
"Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations," a 272-page hardcover book with more than 250 color maps and illustrations, is available for $60 from major bookstores nationwide and from the Library of Congress Sales Shop, Washington, D.C. 20540-4985. Credit card orders are taken at (888) 682-3557. Online orders can be placed at www.loc.gov/shop.
# # #
PR 07-192
09/26/07
ISSN 0731-3527"
GPS Coordinate Systems : Google Earth : WGS84 : Ordnance Survey : GEOTRANS : UTM : ED50 : Problems and Conversions
The prime meridian of GPS and Google Earth, which uses WGS84 (1984), runs 102.5 meters east of the Prime Meridian of 1884 at Greenwich. This is not an "error". Read at the Flamsteed Astronomy Society why that is so.
Determining just where we are or where a given place is located is not as simple as it may initially seem to anyone who uses GPS for navigation of their car. Large discrepancies exist between various existing coordinate and mapping systems, so that awareness of conversion problems is necessary, for example, in archaeological and archaeoastronomical work as also for water navigation.
GPS (Global Positioning System) operates by means of satellites which determine the position of your GPS receiver. If we define a particular located position as "X", then position X must be a given a value within some kind of a specific coordinate system, and in the case of GPS that position X is given in terms of latitude and longitude, as calculated by WGS84 (World Geodetic System 1984), a standard which was revised by the geopotential model EGM96 (Earth Gravity Model 1996 ) and is in future revision in 2008 as EGM2008 (initially EGM06).
There are numerous other survey systems used for mapping and cartography around the globe and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency offers the program Geographic Translator (GEOTRANS) for conversion of "twenty-five different coordinate systems, map projections, grids, and coding schemes, and over two hundred different datums...."
The Universal Transverse Mercator Coordinate System is used for mapping the world, now based on WGS84.
A different survey system is ED50, which is used in mapping Western Europe, excluding Britain, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland, who have their own mapping systems. ED50 can differ by as much as 100 meters west and south from WGS84, i.e. GPS.
Similarly large up to 100-meter+ differences from WGS84 can also be found in the mapping coordinate systems used by Great Britain and Ireland.
For Great Britian, beside GPS, the major mapping system in use is:
OSGB36 - Ordinance Survey Great Britain 1936-1962 - The British national grid reference system.
For Ireland, the major mapping system besides GPS in use is The Irish grid reference system (which also includes Northern Ireland).
Coordinate conversion viz. transformation forms for both the British and Irish coordinate systems are available at the nearby.org.uk Coordinate Converter and also at the Ordnance Survey Coordinate Transformer.
If we plug in e.g. SU123422 (the grid reference for Stonehenge), nearby.org.uk converts this to
51.178904N Long: 1.825418W
which is very close to latitudinal and longitudinal values found online
51.178816N Longitude: 1.826563W (Megalithic Portal)
51.178381, -1.824018, Stonehenge (Stone Search)
51°10′44″N, 1°49′34″W (Wikipedia)
For megalithic sites specifically:
Stone Search:
1) generates GPS-suitable output as a comma-separated-variable (CSV) format with the fields latitude, longitude, site name
or at the standard search form
2) generates the British or Irish grid reference
Other Specialized Converters are:
GPS Coordinate Converter with MAP feature showing location (we entered WGS84 data 51.178381, -1.824018 for Stonehenge and received GPS N 51 10.703 W 1 49.441 and latitude and longitude in degrees minutes and seconds N51 10 42W1 49 26)
Coordinate Converter Latitude, Longitude <=> UTM (with choice of Datum)
Geographic/UTM Coordinate Converter
JEEEP.com (Translate coordinates WGS-84, NAD-83, and NAD-27 to and from Latitude/Longitude and UTM)
UK Street Map Coordinate Converter
Archaeoptics (Easting Northing)
Map Window GIS (Open Source Programmable Geographic Information System Tools)
Latitude Longitude Converter
Find Out Where You Are (latitude & longitude, national grid references (NGR), Maidenhad locators (QRA)
Determining just where we are or where a given place is located is not as simple as it may initially seem to anyone who uses GPS for navigation of their car. Large discrepancies exist between various existing coordinate and mapping systems, so that awareness of conversion problems is necessary, for example, in archaeological and archaeoastronomical work as also for water navigation.
GPS (Global Positioning System) operates by means of satellites which determine the position of your GPS receiver. If we define a particular located position as "X", then position X must be a given a value within some kind of a specific coordinate system, and in the case of GPS that position X is given in terms of latitude and longitude, as calculated by WGS84 (World Geodetic System 1984), a standard which was revised by the geopotential model EGM96 (Earth Gravity Model 1996 ) and is in future revision in 2008 as EGM2008 (initially EGM06).
There are numerous other survey systems used for mapping and cartography around the globe and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency offers the program Geographic Translator (GEOTRANS) for conversion of "twenty-five different coordinate systems, map projections, grids, and coding schemes, and over two hundred different datums...."
The Universal Transverse Mercator Coordinate System is used for mapping the world, now based on WGS84.
A different survey system is ED50, which is used in mapping Western Europe, excluding Britain, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland, who have their own mapping systems. ED50 can differ by as much as 100 meters west and south from WGS84, i.e. GPS.
Similarly large up to 100-meter+ differences from WGS84 can also be found in the mapping coordinate systems used by Great Britain and Ireland.
For Great Britian, beside GPS, the major mapping system in use is:
OSGB36 - Ordinance Survey Great Britain 1936-1962 - The British national grid reference system.
For Ireland, the major mapping system besides GPS in use is The Irish grid reference system (which also includes Northern Ireland).
Coordinate conversion viz. transformation forms for both the British and Irish coordinate systems are available at the nearby.org.uk Coordinate Converter and also at the Ordnance Survey Coordinate Transformer.
If we plug in e.g. SU123422 (the grid reference for Stonehenge), nearby.org.uk converts this to
51.178904N Long: 1.825418W
which is very close to latitudinal and longitudinal values found online
51.178816N Longitude: 1.826563W (Megalithic Portal)
51.178381, -1.824018, Stonehenge (Stone Search)
51°10′44″N, 1°49′34″W (Wikipedia)
For megalithic sites specifically:
Stone Search:
1) generates GPS-suitable output as a comma-separated-variable (CSV) format with the fields latitude, longitude, site name
or at the standard search form
2) generates the British or Irish grid reference
Other Specialized Converters are:
GPS Coordinate Converter with MAP feature showing location (we entered WGS84 data 51.178381, -1.824018 for Stonehenge and received GPS N 51 10.703 W 1 49.441 and latitude and longitude in degrees minutes and seconds N51 10 42W1 49 26)
Coordinate Converter Latitude, Longitude <=> UTM (with choice of Datum)
Geographic/UTM Coordinate Converter
JEEEP.com (Translate coordinates WGS-84, NAD-83, and NAD-27 to and from Latitude/Longitude and UTM)
UK Street Map Coordinate Converter
Archaeoptics (Easting Northing)
Map Window GIS (Open Source Programmable Geographic Information System Tools)
Latitude Longitude Converter
Find Out Where You Are (latitude & longitude, national grid references (NGR), Maidenhad locators (QRA)
Ancient Mariners and Ancient Seafaring : Navigation and Maps : Stars and Megaliths
In an article at Yahoo News titled "Ancient mariner tools found near Cyprus", George Psyllides, AP writer, reports on new archaeological finds on the island of Cyprus which suggest that ancient seafaring was more far-reaching and much older than previously thought by the mainstream scientific community.
Psyllides quotes Colgate University's Albert J. Ammerman, the survey's director, as follows:
"These are the people who are the pioneers.... All of what we see on the land is just a tip of the iceberg of what is in the water...."
Psyllides writes further:
"The archaeologists believe that tools found at the two sites were used by seafaring foragers who frequented the island well over 10,000 years ago — before the first permanent settlers arrived around 8,200 B.C.
Psyllides quotes Colgate University's Albert J. Ammerman, the survey's director, as follows:
"These are the people who are the pioneers.... All of what we see on the land is just a tip of the iceberg of what is in the water...."
Psyllides writes further:
"The archaeologists believe that tools found at the two sites were used by seafaring foragers who frequented the island well over 10,000 years ago — before the first permanent settlers arrived around 8,200 B.C.
They are thought to have sailed from present-day Syria and Turkey, at least 46 miles north and east of the island.
The dawn of seafaring in the region has been put at around 9,500 B.C. from evidence found 20 years ago at Aetokremnos, on Cyprus' southern Akrotiri peninsula.
The finds indicate these early wanderers traveled more widely, and more frequently, than was previously believed, outside experts say.
"This just shows there is a lot more activity than was originally thought," said Tom Davis, an archaeologist and director of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute.... "We're looking at repeated visits around the island."
"These would be people stopping deliberately, coming to the island to use resources, setting themselves with a clear understanding of the landscape," Davis said."
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